In-game cheats

The use of in-game cheats is allowed when flying Emperor's Hammer missions.

This page documents their effects.

TIE Fighter

TIE has unlimited weapons and invulnerability cheats. Using either will reduce the score by 90%

Competitions

Sometimes you may want to reward players not using cheats in a competition.

Flying on Easy, the Primary Goals are worth 2500 points. A score under this is very likely to have been done with cheats. (Note: a score over this is still possible with cheats)

A score which achieves at least 20% of the established high score is very, very likely to have been done without cheating. (The exception is when the cheats allow you to survive an otherwise impossible scenario)

X-Wing vs TIE Fighter and Balance of Power

XvT/BoP has the option of using unlimited waves where your flight group will endlessly respawn. Enabling this results in a score of 0 being recorded and no information about the completion time is saved.

Scores of 0 result in the pilot file requiring TAC approval before it is accepted.

Competitions

The 0 scores make unlimited waves unviable for competitions, unless submitting only for particpation points.

X-Wing Alliance

XWA has unlimited weapons and invulnerability cheats. Using invulnerability will reduce the score by 90%.

Note: unlimited weapons does not affect the score.

Note: invulnerability does not prevent you taking damage, it prevents you going below 1% hull. You can still be disabled and thus get stuck.

Competitions

If you wanted to run a competition that forced players not to use it, including a severe penalty for each warhead fire and doing a custom scoring system is perhaps the best option. This would somewhat reduce the benefit of using the cheat, but not prevent it entirely.

Without invulnerability, the minimum score for successful completion is 250 points.

X-Wing

X-Wing has unlimited weapons and invulnerability cheats. Using either results in no score being recorded in the pilot file.

Note: the post-mission debrief screen shows an unchanged score. This is inaccurate - no score is actually recorded.

Note: because no score is recorded, you effectively cannot fly the tour of duty with cheats as you can never progress to the second mission.